by Kelly Gay
Her wisecrack was just the kick they needed to get past the wonder. Rion headed back to her chair. “I know we’re dark, but let’s continue to monitor our space and keep well clear of those ships and satellites.”
The crew tabled their awe and got to work.
“Starting to pick up some power sigs from the ring,” Niko said.
“Captain, may I suggest maintaining a scanning orbit of five hundred kilometers?” Spark said.
“You may. Less, move us in. Once Spark locates the Cartographer facility, work out a flight path. Ram, I want to know who’s down there and how many—scour for weapons and defensive systems in orbit and on the surface. Niko, monitor their comms and keep me updated. We do this right, and we might just get in and get out without incident.”
“Would be a first,” Ram murmured under his breath.
That brought another laugh from the crew.
Who knew, maybe today would be that day. They did have Spark on their side and a ship capable of advanced-level stealth.
Then again, it could very well be business as usual.
Or worse.
CHAPTER 9
The wheel no longer corresponds to the images I recall of a bleak and broken thing, of bare bones and rendered flesh, of mist and misery. Gone are the abandoned cities, the wrecked stations, and the great rifts. The crashed ships, the burns and brunt of the civil war that raged between the Forerunners who opposed the Master Builder’s unethical human experiments and then Mendicant Bias and the Primordial’s control.
Those barren stretches of exposed and twisted substructure, of scorched earth and toppled towers, have been swallowed up by a hundred thousand years of ecological growth and change. All the pain and suffering lies forgotten, smoothed over by time, hidden by pristine, inviting, and even beautiful topography.
As Gyre 11, one of the original twelve rings created by the Master Builder, the construct had once boasted a diameter of thirty thousand kilometers with an intense directed-energy firing cone of cross-phased supermassive neutrino bursts capable of annihilating any neurologically complex living organisms—animals, plants, trees…
On the ancient human planet Faun Hakkor, I saw firsthand the utter loss of life down to the creatures in the seas, to great swaths of collective, symbiotic forests and mycorrhizal networks.
Zeta Halo is the only remaining ring from the Senescent Array. In the last days of the Forerunner-Flood War, it was rescued from near collision and repurposed to one-third of its former diameter and included among a new Halo Array created by the lesser Ark—those smaller rings created in secret and eventually used as a final means to eradicate the Flood.
Zeta, though it appears similar to its counterparts, is what my human companions might refer to as a proverbial black sheep. It still bears elements of its archaic design, still holds within its soil and dust and stone the remnants of lost cities and settlements, generation after generation of humans living and evolving and forming complex civilizations.
Seeing the scars healed over does not bring me comfort or peace. Instead, the images settle in me like a thorn lodged in bone.
No amount of time can ease the horror of my captivity here. I do not forget. I do not forgive. Deep in the substructure of this Halo, I lost my humanity and became Forerunner. I remember because I must and because a thousand centuries later, I am still furious.
“Are you sure about this?” Rion is now asking me. She stands at the holotable, her hands clasped behind her back.
She knows my tale. They all do. The care and concern on their faces tells me they will support whatever decision I make. This power both humbles and frightens me. Friendship is a rare commodity indeed.
“I am certain, Captain,” I assure her. The story has not ended. “Our path is quite clear.”
With a sharp nod, she turns her attention to the holograph. “Where do we begin?”
The crew swivels in their station chairs to listen intently to my findings. I have built a holo image of Zeta Halo above the table. Already having made my examination and calculations, I bring forth a section for the crew’s inspection. “I believe this is where we will start.” The enhanced LIDAR scans have penetrated growth and sediment to reveal the shape of the land beneath, and I have recognized the area.
“This dry valley was once a river.” I increase the view to show a wide valley framed by sheer gray cliffs. I move the blueprint along the valley to its end, where a stark cliff rises vertically by nearly a hundred meters. “There was once a waterfall here, fed by a lake.” Above the cliff, the area widens out into an ancient lake basin. “There.” I point to the center of the basin.
Rion leans in. “What is that?”
“It looks like a crater,” Lessa says.
“More or less. It appears small from our current view, but it is twenty-six meters in diameter and leads into Zeta’s substructure.” I move out of the LIDAR scan and into a pleasing satellite image.
I did love my beautiful ring; that this one should look so similar to Installation 04 fills me with sudden sadness and irritation and intense envy.
I must, however, ignore these emotions.
“The basin is covered with vegetation. I propose we cut through and settle the ship directly inside the ring.” From their expressions, it is clear no one has expected such a proposal.
“Inside the Halo,” Niko dubiously repeats. “You want us to fly into it.”
“Yes. That is what I just said. It is the quickest and safest place to land, keeping us clear of any activity on the surface. There are approximately 3,416 humans currently on the ring. Four hundred and six of those are scientists from many different subgroups of study, while the remaining are military. I have detected several hundred human drones working across the ring’s surface, scanning and recording, mapping the surface and looking for control centers and power sources.”
“Aboveground, we know what’s out there. Going underground,” Ram says, “how can we be sure it’s any safer?”
“Right,” Niko adds. “There must be thousands of workers inside keeping the ring operational. It must be dozens of kilometers deep. That’s like a whole other world down there.”
“Most of the constructs within the foundation are Sentinels. They come in a variety of sizes and functions.”
“And why would they be safer than the humans on the surface?” Rion questions. “And what about the monitor in charge?”
While their queries border on tedious, I practice patience. “The monitor of this ring does not appear to be functioning in its intended capacity, which is why its defensive forces have not made an appearance. According to my data, there has been no reaction to the presence of human activity, which has been continuous since 2555. If it was going to protect this ring or direct an attack, it would have done so by now.”
There was a time during my own tenure as monitor of Installation 04 that I attempted to contact this ring’s monitor, Despondent Pyre. Even then, it did not respond. Now that my human memories have returned, I must wonder if perhaps its intended directive was different from mine and the other monitors’. After all, Bornstellar did send this ring to its firing location with the intent that it should be a tomb for all those who died throughout its horrific past; that it should remain hidden in the mists of time, lost and forgotten.
“All right,” Rion says decisively. “Let’s make a flight plan and then deep scan our path to see what’s in the area and what we need to avoid.”
“Aye, Cap.” Lessa turns back to the navigation console.
It is entirely unnecessary.
“The navigation plan is already completed,” I tell them. “The closest military camp is thirty kilometers off our entry zone. Two drones are estimated to approach our projected path in approximately twenty-three hours. The closest science base to the basin is twelve kilometers off, and their latest excursions have gotten them as close to four kilometers from the valley. If they continue on this path, they will encounter a relay station, which will keep them occ
upied for several days or possibly weeks.”
The crew stares at me with a look I am all too familiar with. “I have overstepped.” We each have functions on the ship, of which I am aware, and yet how can I help myself?
Ram chuckles and returns to his display. Lessa and Rion share a smile between them, and Niko is shaking his head. “Man, you haven’t overstepped—you’ve leaped over the goddamn valley.” He is now wearing a wide grin. “No worries, Spark. We get it. This is your op, and it’s personal.”
Yes. I suppose that’s one way to put it.
CHAPTER 10
Zeta Halo
Rion guided the Ace of Spades beneath the curve of the Halo ring. How bizarre it was to see mountain ranges and forests, lakes and rivers, and blue skies and clouds clinging near vertically or completely upside down. The sheer size and complexity left her dumbstruck. Zeta clocked in at three hundred and eighteen kilometers wide and ten thousand kilometers in diameter—nearly the same breadth as Earth. The knowledge and means to create on this colossal scale seemed the stuff of fantasy, of divinity and magic.
How could a civilization capable of building something of such magnitude have been so utterly defeated by the Flood? She would never forget first hearing about them from Spark, and even now a slight chill ran up her spine. If these builders, with all their technological mastery and knowledge, were left wanting, what did that mean for humanity should a threat like that ever appear in vast numbers again?
As Ace descended into the artificially maintained atmosphere, the landscape became clearer. It was a stunning and pristine world, and, until recently, untouched and forgotten. She could see why, according to Spark, the Librarian had lobbied the Forerunner Council to balance the rings’ destructive force with conservation measures, to give them some other redeeming purpose. What better place to house her collections, to keep thousands upon thousands of races and species and flora and fauna content for millennia in their new environment, safe and sound from the Flood?
Only on this ring, that vision of utopia hadn’t gone so well.
The ship went in quiet, though with a construct this enormous and the small contingent present, Rion was pretty sure they could’ve snuck in with an old Kig-Yar junker.
“Captain?”
Spark was waiting expectantly over the holotable. “I will need to take over controls now.”
“The helm is yours.”
Spark directed the ship along a snowcapped mountain range, then lower toward the foothills. As they glided toward a valley of deep gorges and high gray cliffs, a few moving specks caught her eye—what appeared to be rams with wide horns curling behind their necks navigated the low peaks. Ace swept down quickly and smoothly, then leveled off to ride the open space of the dry riverbed between the cliffs. On the plateau atop the cliff, a herd of small deerlike creatures, startled by their approach, sprinted in a great unified arc across the blanket of green.
At the end of the valley, Ace’s thrusters pushed the ship up and over the sheer cliff and across the flat lake basin. Millions of tangled vines with thick, glossy, heart-shaped leaves, some as long as two meters, created a dense carpet over the former lake bed. In the center, the leaves dipped in a perfect circle, an emerald bowl in the middle of the basin.
Ace slowed and came to a hover above the depression. “The vine cover is about four and a half meters thick. There’s nothing under that, just a whole lot of empty space,” Niko said. LIDAR scans built a rendition over the holotable, giving a startling sense of just how vast the substructure below them was. The lake bed rested like a tiny lily pad over a deep, dark ocean.
“Not picking up any hostiles or life signs in range,” Ram added.
“Niko, you getting any chatter nearby?”
“No, Cap, nothing.”
“Should we use guns to break through the vines?” Lessa asked.
“No. I don’t want to attract attention,” Rion answered. “And we can’t risk plowing through and bringing those vines down over us. We’ll turn the burners on them.”
“Good idea,” Ram said.
A look of unbridled glee crossed Niko’s face. “The pyro in me approves. Nothing like a little tri-hy burn to start the day.” He accessed Ace’s outboard cameras and pulled up a feed of the basin from the edge of one of the ship’s aft thrusters as she maneuvered into position.
Rion aimed for a controlled accretion on the throttle, just enough to light up a little triamino hydrazine fuel and torch a small hole—anything bigger might send up smoke signals and alert the curious. Ignite burners, two-second burst, and she was done, easing up on controls and then checking the feeds, pleased to see it was working like a charm. The intense heat fried the vines clean through, leaving embers to eat up a radiating path outward before dying out to the moisture content in the vines and leaves.
“Excellently done, Captain,” Spark said. “We are clear to proceed if you’re ready.”
Ready to take her ship inside a Forerunner megastructure. She almost laughed. The idea seemed absurd, and yet here they were about to do just that. Ready was relative. That old excitement was there, though, lurking under the caution and wariness, that touch of recklessness and drive to explore the unknown. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she quipped. “All eyes on consoles and reporting please.”
The Ace of Spades leveled off and Rion continued VTOL procedures to the ship’s main thrusters, maintaining a full vertical pivot to ease the ship straight down into the belly of the ring. Niko leaned over to hit a command, and four smaller bridge screens, in addition to the main viewscreen, flickered to life, Ace’s outboard cams feeding in the scenes one meter at a time. First came the burnt entrails and singed edges of the vine cover, and then… darkness.
Rion tensed. Every screen was pitch-black. Their only visual reference was the blueprint hovering over the tactical table. As sensors provided detail, the holograph continually revised itself, revealing a network of latticed superstructure, several hundred meters thick, supported by massive pillars beneath the lake bed. The only break in the structure was the twenty-six-meter hole, which appeared to be by design.
Zeta’s substructure was reading an incredible fifteen kilometers in depth and growing.
On the blueprint, the pillars supporting the undercarriage of the ring’s latticework and girders continued into the depths, their size breathtaking. Still the camera feeds brought back blackness. They were in a pocket of nothing, in a controlled vertical descent at about twenty meters per second. Rion’s attention stayed on the ever-changing blueprint as it attempted to find any proximal points of reference, but they were just a tiny vessel sinking to the bottom of the darkest pit.
At eight minutes and ten kilometers, the scene began to change. Ace’s exterior lights finally revealed a world of giant cross sections, linking pillars larger than any skyscraper she had ever seen. Immense pathways stretched beyond their scanners’ ability to detect. There were segments within cross sections, creating open spaces and tunnels some six stories tall and sixty meters wide, and fully walled chambers of enormous size.
And there they were, a speck of dust floating down into a mega city. It was disconcerting and intensely humbling.
“There’s a pathway below us in another kilometer,” Spark said.
Evidence of destruction came into view, flash burns, pathways pocked with craters or severed like twigs, buckled supports, and smaller things—vessels, transports, exposed conduits and cabling, and other indefinable refuse—littering passages and tunnels.
“All this damage… it happened before the firing of the ring?” Rion asked. She remembered everything Spark had told her about his time on Zeta as a human, including the civil war, ongoing since before his arrival, and the near destruction of the Halo as the wolf planet passed through its ring. But she had to hear it out loud, to know there was nothing else she had to worry about, nothing left over or lurking in the darkness.
“Most certainly,” Spark replied.
“Anyone else find it odd, thoug
h?” Niko shared a concerned glance with her before moving on to Spark. “The surface is obviously in good shape, and that doesn’t happen on its own; it takes a hell of a lot of maintenance and power to run atmosphere and artificial gravity. So why is this area abandoned? There’s not even power down here.”
“Perhaps it is a little odd,” Spark admitted, though his tone was untroubled.
“I’m gonna need a little more than ‘perhaps’ to push forward,” Rion said. “Spark, is there a reason sections like this would be in disrepair?”
“There is nothing to suggest the reason is nefarious or dangerous in nature, Captain. I am detecting no such indicators. It is far more likely this section has simply been abandoned. As for the lack of power, there could be many reasons. A prescheduled dormancy cycle for conservation purposes, a complete shutoff of systems and rerouting of power…”
So far things had gone relatively easy, and Rion wanted to keep it that way. The entire mission relied on trust, on putting her faith in Spark, in his knowledge, his suggestions, and his assumptions. But in the end, no matter what he might do or say or cause, the responsibility for whatever might happen was squarely on her shoulders.
“I am simply cautious, like the rest of you,” Spark added. “This ring has existed one hundred thousand years beyond my involvement. Accounting for every conceivable danger at the present time is impossible. I will temper your fears, however, and say I do not believe the caretakers here are a threat.”
Call it a sixth sense or trust or whatever, but Rion believed it too, given the facts so far.
“Nor do I believe the Flood specimens that might still exist in substructure research facilities pose any threat either.”
Her optimism took a nosedive. “I’m sorry… what?”
“Wait a second—what are you saying?” Ram spun in his chair, brow furrowed in disbelief. “Those things are here?”
“It is possible.”
“Jesus, Spark.” The nice tan he’d gotten became several shades paler. They’d all heard Spark’s stories of the Flood; the horror of it was too great to ever forget. “Wouldn’t they have been destroyed a long time ago, considering how dangerous you’ve said they are?”